The Sweet Scent of Apples

Our house has a mini-orchard, planted more than ten years ago by our friends Tim and Nancy (they owned the house  two sets of owners before us). We have a cherry, a plum, a crab apple, and an apple tree. They all blossomed beautifully this spring. The cherry is a little crowded and produced exactly two cherries. The rest of the trees have been producing like crazy. Right now we are dealing with apples. LOTS of apples.

We are not sure what variety these are. They range in size from a ping pong ball to the size of a large fist. Most are smaller than my fist. They are tart and crisp off the tree. When cooked, they have an amazing flavor but they tend to get mushy quickly. I have already made McDonald's style pies (an experiment suggested by Scott and deep fried for Toe) and one of my Gra'ma's style pies. The good news is that because they get mushy, they do not really need to be peeled. Thank goodness! They are so small, it is really time consuming. Jason eats three at a time right from the tree.

We are on our second harvest and Scott has gotten some puff pastry and begun experimenting with more pies for deep frying. We have sampled: apple/pecan/caramel, apple/pineapple, apple/bacon, apple/bacon/cheddar, all amazing. We're having a hard time getting over the idea that these apples came from OUR tree. I see more baking in my future....

The first harvest - more to come